THE JOURNAL

Not Knowing

6 March 2025 Thursday

We were at BusAras, waiting in front of Door No.6 for the Cork bus. When it arrived, passengers disembarked and then the driver got off and ran into the station and right past us. He waved to the bus official at the door but he did not stop. He continued running to the far side of the station and down the stairs. The official turned to the twelve or fifteen of us standing in the queue and he explained that the driver needed a pee. He said that it is a long drive all the way to Cork so it is essential that the driver go to the toilet now. He suggested that we would all be well-advised to have a pee ourselves before we get on the bus too, because this bus has no toilet and there would be no rest stops along the way. He gave us much more detail than we needed but he seemed to enjoy having an audience and the chance to be the person with something important to say.

7 March Friday

Yesterday, as we waited for the bus in Dublin, an elderly man sat down beside me. He assured me that his friend, who is a clairvoyant, has assured him that Donald Trump will not last for two years in this term as President of the USA. She told him that it might be because of death or it might be that he just gets sick of the job. She is not certain of the reason yet. He told me that this clairvoyant is never wrong with her predictions. I am trying to hold this thought.

9 March Sunday

There was a frenetic clamor of barking, braying and howling up in Scully’s wood.  I know this is not the time of year for The Hunt so I wondered what was going on.  I worried about the fox. As I drove up the boreen to go and collect the Sunday papers in the village, I met a man I had never seen before walking along whistling and calling out.  I asked what he was looking for. He told that me his dachshund, Ernie, was around somewhere.  I told him about the noise from the woods and he said, “Yes. That will be Ernie. He will be with the rest of the hounds.  They are chasing rabbits.”

11 March Tuesday

We have one warm and bright day and the next is cold with bitter wind.  Everyday is different and everyday is a surprise. Yesterday I ate lunch sitting outdoors by the kitchen door. Today I am unable to step out without a scarf and hat and gloves.

12 March Wednesday

Occasionally things blow down from the farm when the winds are strong. Sometimes I find an escaped empty plastic feed bag. Today I picked up a shiny silver package to throw away when I reached home. It had contained a Vaginal Delivery System for Cattle. This is a first.

14 March Friday

I went to visit Tommie in the hospital. He said he was happy to see me although he was terribly weak. His oxygen tube was hanging off his lip instead of being in his nose. I helped him to get it adjusted and then we talked a little. He was unable to project his voice. I sat near to him on a stool and listened carefully. His rasping lungs were louder than his voice. He told me that he did not think he would get out of there alive. A priest came by wearing a long narrow scarf. I believe it is called a stole. It was bright purple. The priest was short and black and round. He read Tommie’s name off the sign above the bed and then asked in a loud and kindly voice: “Would Thomas like to receive a Blessing today?” Tommie said yes and the priest performed his ritual. He turned to me and asked with his eyes if I too wanted a Blessing but I shook my head No. Tommie kept telling me that he was glad that I had finally come Home. I left when his eyes started to close. He was ready for a nap. I promised to return next week.

15 March Saturday

I recognize the things that are flowering, but often I do not know their names. I have come to accept that I do not really care if I know their names or not. If I really wanted to know I would look them up when I got home, or I would get an app to provide myself with an immediate answer but I am okay with the Not Knowing. I am happy for things to appear every year at the same time just as I appear every year at the same time. There are dandelions, primroses, and Lesser Celandine as well as masses of daffodils. The wild garlic is pushing up too.

16 March Sunday

I am short. This is not new. I have always been short. I now resort to using a small stepladder in the house since the last time I jumped down off a chair I broke a bone in my foot. The stepladder is more cumbersome to locate and to drag around but it is safer. This morning I climbed up the two steps to reach the bag of porridge oats. My head, up near the low ceiling, was immediately covered with a thick coating of cobwebs. I could store the package of oats somewhere else, but this is where we have always kept it. I can easily stand on tip-toes to return it to its shelf, but when the package is new and full, it is a tight fit on the shelf. That is when I need the ladder. And now all of the cobwebs are gone, so the problem is less pressing.

18 March Tuesday

We were delighted to see the first rhubarb of the year on Keith’s table at the market. We bought it. We cooked it. We ate it. It was delicious. It is good to know that there will be more and more rhubarb in the weeks to come.

19 March Wednesday

I was out for a walk and I met Yolanda on the road. She is Australian and I am American. We both turned off our phones in order to chat for a minutes in the bright sun. She had been listening to an opera from Milan as she walked. I had been listening to a novel set in Tasmania. We laughed at this international moment. My phone rang. It brought us back to Tipperary. I was sad, but not surprised to receive the news that my dear friend Tommie is dead.

20 March Thursday

In the shop, there is a lot of discussion about Tommie. The news of his death is spreading. Without exception, people agree that he was A Real Gentleman. That he was a gentle man. That he was A Great Man for the Chat, which means that he always had time or that he always made time to talk with whoever was there for a conversation. Tommie left school young and worked as a farm laborer all his life.  He did jobs for people and helped wherever he was needed.  No one has a bad word to say.

21 March Friday

We went to Tommie’s wake. I did not like seeing him laid out in his coffin in the middle of the room, though I was glad to see that he was wearing his gold Pioneer lapel pin. He was so proud of that pin. His hands were clasped around his rosary beads. We shook all the hands and spoke to all of the extended family who were lined up against the three walls. We heard the news that Tommie’s old friend Aiden died today. Then we drove home and had supper.

22 March Saturday

We decided not to go to the Farmers Market this morning because Tommie’s funeral was being held at eleven. I picked Breda up and we drove together down to the village. She did not want to go alone. She said she wanted someone to Take the Bare Look off Her. The area all around the church was full of people, and it was still early. There were twenty-five, or maybe thirty, men and boys, some in their hurling uniforms, waiting on each side of the road at the base of the bridge. As the hearse carrying the coffin drove over the bridge all of the hurling players, young and old, started walking slowly into the village on either side of the vehicle. Tommie had been an avid sportsman. He would have loved being accompanied to the church by this Guard of Honour. The athletes stood in two long lines as he was carried into the church, followed by the family, and then by the rest of us. The church was packed. By the time the burial was being performed in the churchyard, the rain was bucketing down. People began to leave because it was simply too wet and too cold to stand around.

24 March Monday

Someone drove their car into The Hair Den. They must have been traveling at a great speed when the car crossed the road to hit the corner of the building. I heard that the driver had a bloody lip but was otherwise unhurt. No one is mentioning the name of the driver, but almost everyone knows who it is. I do not know who it is. Besides the smashed corner which took the impact, the building has horizontal cracks along the front. The consensus is that it will be many months before it can re-open for business.

 

A cut of tart

2 April Wednesday

I know that I will continue to miss Tommie in the coming months and weeks. He was so sad and miserable, and his poor health was dragging him down. He was not allowed to eat any of the things he loved to eat. Without those small pleasures his life was grimmer by the day. He knew the time was right to die.  It was only at his funeral that I finally learned his age. The priest announced that he was 94. Our conversations and the sharing of delicious seasonal fruit have been such a special part of my life in recent years. It was a pleasure to know him. There will not be another such friend.

4 April Friday

A cut of tart = A slice of pie

5 April Saturday

The bees are busy. Their combined buzzing as they zoom in and out of the roof above the door to the book barn is loud. The days are beautifully warm and the nights are cold. This weather is wonderful.

7 April Monday

Wild garlic is everywhere. There is so much of it that I can enjoy stepping on it in order to be surrounded with the tangy smell. We are eating it often. We are eating it several times a day every day.  The stems, cut up very tiny, as though they are chives, make a citrus-like topping to sprinkle on anything that we might be eating.

9 April Wednesday

The girl at the counter ran off to collect something that the woman had forgotten to put into her shopping basket. While waiting, the woman leaned heavily on her walking frame. I recognized the woman but I did not know her name. She turned away from the counter and showed me her shopping list. It was written in pencil on a piece of card about the size of a postcard. The surface of the card was a bit nubbly, sort of like watercolour paper. She told me that she had been using this same piece of card for her shopping list for nearly three months now. After each trip to the shop, she returned home and carefully rubbed out the list, and then she began again. Sometimes she used both sides of the card, but usually one side was enough. She was proud of her eraser which she said was white and soft and perfect for the job. And she was proud of the re-using of the same piece of card, which she informed me was good for the environment. She wanted me to admire her thoughtfulness and her care, so I did.

10 April Thursday

Stitchwort. Primrose. Bluebells. Wild Garlic. Vetch. Forget-me-not. Lesser Celandine. The verges and the hedgerows are full of flowering plants. Many fields are full of bright yellow rape.

11 April Friday

We have had over a week of warm and sultry weather. Maybe it is ten days? We stopped counting because it is all so pleasant. We have been eating out doors, throwing the doors and windows open to the sound of birdsong. The birds are noisy and happy and busy with nest building. Everyone wonders aloud if this is our summer. There is a fear that this might be the only good weather we have all year. The lack of a proper summer last year keeps our expectations low. Brendan announced that this spate of recent good weather has been Last Summer Come Late, so he claims it is safe to anticipate more good weather to come.

12 April Saturday

This is the second week of the fresh asparagus from County Wexford. Each Saturday I buy two or three bunches and we eat it several days in a row. This asparagus is the very first that we see each year, and it is the best that we will have. The crop from this small grower lasts for six or seven weeks, so it is important to purchase some every week at the Farmers Market. It is important to savour it and to hold the taste in our minds and in our mouths, because it will be another year before any other asparagus tastes as good.

13 April Sunday

Something is dead in the shed. The smell is terrible. I leave the door open all day in the hope that the air will blow out the odour. It is not working. Whatever it is, this dead thing is only in the early stages of rotting.

 

14 April Monday

Today I made my first batch of wild garlic pesto.  I must make a bigger batch so that I can freeze some. Ideally I should walk up the Mass Path to Johnnie Mackin’s to fill up a big bucket with leaves and to dig up more bulbs to replant down here under the trees. I fear the walk up there is completely overgrown. It promises to be a struggle. I cannot remember the last time I walked up that way. The longer I wait the worse it will get.

15 April Tuesday

The people who go to the Farmer’s Market regularly on Saturday always bring their egg cartons back. They give them to Keith, or to Pat the Fishmonger, who keeps chickens and ducks. His eggs are often, but not always, on sale too. Keith’s eggs are more plentiful and they are always on sale unless one is late arriving at the market and he has already sold out. Keith glues a piece of paper with his name onto his boxes but Pat just re-uses any old box. He does not label it in any way. Keith also places a small piece of paper inside each box. He and his wife make a tiny printed label to put into each box of eggs that he sells. The label is made of two small pieces of paper, cut carefully with pinking shears and glued together with the date hand-written. The printed note gives the Best Before date. Making a little label for each box, one at a time, is a labour-intensive way to sell eggs. I am collecting these labels.

Meanwhile, I have an egg box from Pat that is from Mooncoin. I love the name Mooncoin. It is a poor translation from the Irish, which is roughly Coyne’s bogland. Mooncoin is a long narrow village in County Kilkenny.  It is a place that we do no more than drive through and right out the other end. Mooncoin consistently scores high in the Tidy Towns Competition each year. Other than that, we rarely hear anything about it. Having an egg box from Mooncoin gives me great pleasure even thought I know the eggs inside are from somewhere else.

16 April Wednesday

Dan Joe wears his cigarette lighter on the lapel of his suit jacket. He wears a tweed suit jacket all year round and most days he wears a necktie too. The lighter is attached to his lapel with a large safety pin. He says he needs to keep it handy. He needs to know where it is because most of his pockets have holes in them. He explains that since hardly anyone smokes anymore, it is not easy to get a light when you need one and it is a bigger problem to have a cigarette and no flame to light it than it is to have no cigarette at all. As he spoke to me, the lighter swayed back and forth on his chest.

18 April Good Friday

The bull is again residing in the front field. His bulk makes him appear like a huge black cut-out in the middle of the grass. He eyes me slowly when I walk by. He does not move his head, only his eyes.

19 April Saturday

The smell of slurry fills the air. The stench is awful. It burns the back of my throat when I step outside. The stench of death in the shed remains terrible. I keep thinking that what I need to do is to go around all the inside edges in the shed to see what has curled up to die in a safe and hidden place. The trouble is that I do not want to find the rotting corpse so this is a job I put off day after day. A job to Put On the Long Finger.

20 April Easter Sunday

I finally finished moving all of the firewood from the cut-up apple tree that fell down in the destructive winter storm, Éowyn. That wood will not be ready to burn for at least six months. The tree was torn apart. Andrzej cut it up and stacked the wood neatly in the outside shelter of the sauna. Now that room is about to fall down and its roof is flapping. We have decided on a plan to build the new space but that cannot be done until this wood is moved. Today Niall arrived with more firewood. I feel like I will never be finished with this endless wheel-barrowing and stacking, and still every evening is cold enough to need a fire in the woodstove.

21 April Easter Bank Holiday Monday

On again off again rain. The sun in between the small downpours is hot. I am trying to do outdoor jobs but each time it rains I go back into one of the barn buildings and I do a different kind of job. All day long I am bouncing between indoors and outdoors.  I never take off my Wellie boots. I am always ready to go back outside. The Shallykabukies with their striped shells are everywhere after the rain.  They are on the windows and on the doors and they ooze along in the wet grass.  The tool shed still smells of death.

22 April Tuesday

I have set up a small work table in the Envelope Room. I am finally replacing some of the interiors that have faded or just generally look bad. I do not want to re-do the entire room but I am happy to dip in and out with this job as the weather continues cool and wet and un-spring like. With this table in Ready Position I can repair the interiors that need replacing without turning it into a full-time job.

23 April Wednesday

Anything Strange? is the question. News from real people is what is of interest. The local happenings, or even a lack of anything happening, is what is important. Both world and national news are on the radio, the television and the internet. That kind of news is available but it is not the same as real news. Real News is that from real people in the immediate world where we live. It involves those people that we know. It is about who is planting what and how a sick cow is recuperating. It is about who died and about who has a new motorcar. I gather bits of local news in order to pass on to Tommie, but then I remember that he is dead and there is no longer any need for me to collect the correct kind of news to answer his question Anything Strange?

24 April Thursday

Josie is a nickname for Joseph, not just for Josephine.

25 April Friday

Every evening the teat trailer reappears in Joe’s yard.  Every morning it disappears when it is taken off to whichever field the calves are in. Joe fills it with some kind of formula so that the calves do not need to drink milk from their mothers.  He can sell the mothers’ milk. Soon the calves will be off the formula and they can eat grass like all of the other cattle. The teat trailer will get put away in a shed. It used to be a bright pink but it has faded over the years.

26 April Saturday

The noise in the SuperValu was loud.  It was barely possible to hear myself think.  The Pope’s funeral in Rome was being broadcast live on television.  There were two large screens set up, one in the bread department and one near the check-outs.  The Mass was being broadcast complete with its translation from the Latin for everyone to hear.  I saw the young man who took over the business from his father.  I said that I had never been in a supermarket where a funeral was being broadcast.  He said he had not either, but his mother insisted that he do it. She said he would never forgive him if he did not, so he did.  He added the the two televisions to further please her.

The Fly Curtain

4 May Sunday

A lovely sunny morning. The doors and windows were all open. I rushed in and out doing jobs and then stopping myself from doing jobs and making myself sit down outside to enjoy the perfect weather and the birdsong.  A swallow swooped in and raced around the big room. I closed some doors, opened a window and encouraged it to fly out again. I continued with my day. The swallow did not go toward the open window and it did not go back out the kitchen door. Instead it flew hard and fast into one of the large windows that is all glass and offers no opening. I thought it would knock itself out. I was waiting for it to either depart, or to knock itself unconscious. I had a colander at the ready to trap the dazed bird and to carry it outside but it did not do either thing. It just kept flying up high and sitting quietly on a wire while it decided on its next move. After a few hours I went and got a stepladder. My plan was to open the skylight and to encourage the bird to go out that way when it felt the air coming in through the window. But I was too short. Even at the top of the ladder, I could not reach the opening of the skylight. I went back to my other jobs and each time I heard the hard thwack of the swallow as it crashed into the window once again, I ran in to collect the stunned body. But each time there was no body.  The bird was alert and back up high. Maud and Peter arrived. After our hellos, I asked how they felt about ladders. Peter said he would have nothing to do with them. In contrast, Maud said it was not a problem and she scurried up the steps to open the skylight. We went outside to drink tea and to eat her lovely cake. When we came back into the house, the swallow had departed.

6 May Tuesday

I spent a long time hunting for and then finally locating the fly curtain. It is ugly, but I put it up in front of the back door so that not only will insects be dissuaded from coming in but hopefully the birds will too. I can now keep the top half of the stable door open all day to let in the air. The fattest of the farm cats takes no heed. He jumped through the fly curtain right up over the bottom half of the door and into the kitchen. My shouts terrified him and he jumped out again. I hope he is too fearful to try this again.

7 May Wednesday

The roads are lined with frothy cow parsley. There is so much cow parsley, stitchwort and so much blossom on the hawthorn trees that this whole world seems to be a celebration of white flowers. Everyone talks about the quantity of blossom as well as about this ongoing stretch of sunny days.

9 May Friday

Simon was in a room with three beds. The other two men had strong Tipperary accents. He could not always understand what they were saying. Perhaps they had trouble understanding him too. Each time I went in for a visit over the ten day period, the man in the bed nearest the door told me that that he was going home tomorrow. His name was Noel and he did not have any teeth. He said that being in the hospital was like being in prison. Every day Noel gleefully announced that he was going home tomorrow and every day he was still there when I next returned. As Simon left the ward to come home today, Noel made his same pronouncement and waved goodbye merrily.

11 May Sunday

The gooseberries are not even close to being ripe but the birds are  eating them. They are stripping the branches of both leaves and berries. It is a competition to see who will get the most berries.

13 May Tuesday

Two women were discussing the new conservatory recently built by someone else. In these cash-strapped times, this is less common than it was a few years ago. People build a conservatory onto the side of their houses. It is important to situate it in a such a way that every single person passing the house can see it. It is important for other people to know that a conservatory has been built. There is an element of bragging in all of this. If a conservatory is put onto the back of the house, it will be private but then no one can see it. It seems that all of the glass makes people nervous. They do not want to sit in the conservatory because then anyone who is passing can see them sitting there. Because it is not private it ends up being empty. People sit elsewhere in the house. They sit where it is darker and where they cannot be seen by anyone passing. A conservatory sometimes has carefully chosen furniture in it, but even then it rarely has people in it. Increasingly, the conservatory is a place with a washing line. Making people envious because you can afford a conservatory while they cannot afford one is contradicted by the fact that you have merely built an expensive version of the Long Shed for drying your washing.
The saddest conservatory is one I viewed from high up when I was on a bus traveling down from Dublin. It was completely empty except for a drooping washing line loaded with underpants and socks, pyjamas and t-shirts. Everything on the line had once been white. From the bus everything was a dreary shade of grey. All of this was on view in the place where no one wanted to sit because they found it lacking in privacy.

14 May Wednesday

I am picking gooseberries every day even though they are not fully ripe. Most of them are hard. If I do not get them now the birds will win again. I trust the berries will be fine once they are cooked.

15 May Thursday

It was during the winter of 1998-99 when I installed my envelope interiors in what we now call the Envelope Interior Room. The walls had been plastered by Tom Browne, using the soft grey plaster that is no longer available. These days plaster is pinkish in colour and it is called Thistle Plaster. I do not know what the grey plaster was called. Just plaster. I drew squares with pencil directly onto the unpainted walls and then, slowly, over many winter weeks, cut and tore and pasted my interiors within the squares. I have just this week finished the long overdue job of repairing and replacing the majority of the interiors. Many were faded and some had grubby edges. I re-used a lot of the ovals that we had chopped out on the Adana press for an exhibition in Aichi, Japan in 2008. I am so happy with the final result here. The fresh and crisp appearance of the interiors looks sharp. I cannot stop looking at the walls. I make a point of wandering in to the room often just to admire my efforts. My eyes bounce around following a colour or a shape. There is none of the regular repetition of wallpaper. This order is floating and flowing and never completely predictable. My grandmother’s handmade quilt looks perfect…as if it were planned.

16 May Friday

Buttercups are now rampant. The hedgerows are full of wild honeysuckle. The cow parsley is dying back and going skeletal. Elderflowers are displaying  creamy polka dots in the landscape.

17 May Saturday

Whenever I leave the house by car, wherever I am going, it is imperative that I allow extra time for the journey. I may be held up in the farmyard by cattle crossing to or from their fields into or out of the barns. If the cows are crossing I can do nothing but wait and watch them. Joe has a lot of cows. Once out of the farmyard, I may meet a tractor in the road. Or someone else’s cows may be crossing a road from field to field. I can never anticipate what might be in my way and the time planned for travel is never what I expect.

18 May Sunday

It has been three weeks of hot dry weather. The farmers are desperate for rain. I would be happy for this weather to continue for three months.

19 May Monday

Lena was sad to learn that her brother had died so far away from home. She was devastated that his body had not been driven down the roads where they lived for one last time. She felt sorry that he could not say good bye to the farms and fields that he had inhabited while growing up as he took this final journey. When she learned that he had been cremated in that far away place she smashed her forehead on the table, with her hands flat on the table at either side of her head. She moaned as she banged her head repeatedly. She said over and over again: “How could they burn that beautiful body?”

20 May Tuesday

Jacinta brought over her steam cleaner. I do not know what kind of cleaning it is intended for, but she loaned it to me to defrost the freezer out in the shed. It was wonderful. I had a marvelous time blasting steam at the great chunks of ice lining the interior. Instead of chipping away for hours with the whole top half of my body leaning into the freezer, I had finished the job in less than an hour. I was eager to do more. While I was working thunder and rain began. The thunder was loud, but there was no lightening. The downpours were tremendous. The rain bounced off the hard dry ground. The noise of the rain beating down on the metal roof of the shed was deafening.  I was trapped inside for a while but that gave me time to go through all of the frozen food and to sort and list all that was going to be put back inside. I cannot believe how many containers of black currant sauce we have. Simon will never look at this list, but I will.

21 May Wednesday

The all day and all night rain is the only topic of conversation. We needed it and we got it and everyone is happy, if a little overwhelmed by the intensity of it all.

23 May Friday

There is young life everywhere. Tiny lambs chase their mothers through fields.  Joe’s calves are no longer drinking from the teat trailer, but are now out grazing in a skittish group. I met Siobhan in Ardfinnan for a short stroll. There are new tarred paths all around the playing field and along the river. Trees have been planted and new benches positioned for sitting. She told me all about the two baby geese that are the talk of the village. The rest of the geese make a tight circle around them and no one can get close. I did get to see the protection ring but could only make out a tiny bit of golden fluff in the midst of the geese. The whole gaggle is chased in to a tiny shed at sundown to protect both the geese and goslings from the fox.

24 May Saturday

We are still buying the Wexford asparagus at the market. It seems to be lasting longer than ever before. Each time I get some, I feel it is a bonus.

25 May Sunday

The expression Happy Out is used often. It just means that someone is in a cheerful mode. I used to think this was the only use of Out with another word. I know now that people say Gentle Out when describing a biddable dog, or Glad Out when one is all-round pleased, but I still do not understand why the word Out is included.